8 comments:

Oftentimes businesses will pay celebrities to come to their store and hang around and greet customers. They advertise this to induce potential customers. The low rent version of this could well be your group of bloggers. You'd offer to blog for cash. Expect to spend most of your time explaining what a blog is.

It's interesting that cafes have not resisted laptops even though they frown on the use of cell phones and such. I know it is a different set of issues, but still, you can't imagine it's good for business to have people sit for a long time with their computers (as we did). Though you point to an indirect benefit - alerting others to the niceness of the place.

Whether it was crowded then or not, I can certainly say that the cafe typically is packed. It's a real neighborhood hangout. I've been there where people are literally sitting on the floor (it being the on the funkier side of town). Borders -- our big bookstore -- also has laptop users (including me) and that just seems wrong from the business perspective. Aren't you then crossing boundaries where it becomes almost like a library? (Though in truth, most laptop users are people doing homework).